the house of Mde. d’Epinay, of the editors of the _Encyclopédie_,
D’Alembert and Diderot, who engaged him to write articles on music
and upon other subjects in that first of comprehensive dictionaries.
His first independent appearance in literature was in his essay on
the question, “Whether the progress of science and of the arts has
been favourable to the morals of mankind,” in which paradoxically he
maintains the negative. It was the eloquence, we must suppose, rather
than the reasoning, which gained him the prize awarded by the Académie
of Dijon. His next production--a more important one--was his _Discours
sur l’Inegalité parmi les Hommes_ (“Discourse upon Inequality amongst
Men”). In this treatise--the prelude to his more developed _Contrat
Social_--Rousseau affirms the paradox of the _natural_ school, as it
may be termed, which alleged the state of nature--the life of the
uncivilised man--to be the ideal condition of the species. His thesis
that all men are born with equal rights takes a much more defensible
position. In this _Discours_ diet is assigned its due importance in
relation to the welfare of communities.
The romance of _Julie: ou la Nouvelle Héloise_, which excited
an unusual amount of interest, appeared in 1759. _Emile: ou de
l’Education_, was given to the world three years later. It is the most
important of his writings. In the education of Emile, or Emilius, he
propounds his ideas upon one of the most interesting subjects which
can engage attention--the right training of the young. The earlier
part of the book is almost altogether admirable and useful. The later
portion is more open to criticism, although not upon the grounds upon
which was founded the hostility of the authorities of the day who
unjustly condemned the book as irreligious and immoral. Rousseau begins
with laying down the principles of a new and more rational method of
rearing infants, agreeing, in many particulars, with the system of
his predecessor, Locke. At least some of his protests against the
unnatural treatment of children were not altogether in vain. Mothers
in fashionable ranks of life began to recognise the mischief arising
from the common practice of putting their infants out to nurse in
place of suckling them themselves. They began also to abandon the
absurd custom of confining their limbs in mummy-like bandages. Nor,
though long in bearing adequate fruit, were his denunciations of the
barbarous severity of parents and schoolmasters without some result. He
insists upon the incalculable evils of inoculating the young, according
to the almost universal custom, with superstitious beliefs and fancies
which grow with the growth of the recipient until they become radically
fixed in the mind as by a natural development. Most important of all
his innovations in education, and certainly the most heretical, is his
recommendation of a pure dietary.
The publication of his treatise on education brought down a storm
of persecution and opprobrium upon the author. The _Contrat Social_
(in which he seemed to aim at subverting the political and social
traditions, as he had in _Emile_ the educational prejudices of the
venerated Past) appearing soon afterwards added fuel to the flames.
Rousseau found himself forced to flee from Paris, and he sought shelter
in the territory of Geneva. But the authorities, unmindful of the old
reputation of the land of freedom, refusing him an asylum, he proceeded
to Neuchâtel, then under Prussian rule, where he was well received.
From this retreat he replied to the attacks of the Archbishop of Paris,
and addressed a letter to the magistrates of Geneva renouncing his
citizenship. He also published _Letters Written from the Mountain_,
severely criticising the civil and church government of his native
canton. These acts did not tend to conciliate the goodwill of the
rulers of the people with whom he had taken refuge. At this moment an
object of dislike to all the Continental sovereign powers, he gladly
embraced the offer of David Hume to find him an asylum in England. The
social and political revolutionist arrived in London in 1766, and took
up his residence in a village in Derbyshire. He did not remain long in
this country, his irritable temperament inducing him too hastily to
suspect the sincerity of the friendship of his host.
The next eight years of his life were passed in comparative obscurity,
and in migrating from one place to another in the neighbourhood of
Paris. In his solitude gardening and botanising occupied a large part
of his leisure hours. It was at this period he made the acquaintance of
Bernardin St. Pierre, his enthusiastic disciple, and immortalised as
the author of _Paul et Virginie_. His end came suddenly. He had been
settled only a few months in a cottage given him by one of his numerous
aristocratic friends and admirers, when one morning, feeling unwell, he
requested his wife to open the window that he “might once more look on
the lovely verdure of the fields,” and as he was expressing his delight
at the exquisite beauty of the scene and of the skies he fell forward
and instantly breathed his last. At his special request his place of
burial was chosen on an island in a lake in the Park of Ermondville, a
fitting resting-place for one of the most eloquent of the high priests
of Nature.
His character (as we have already remarked) is revealed in his
_Confessions_--which was written, in part, during his brief exile
in England. It, as well as his other productions, shews him to us
as a man of extraordinary sensibility, which, in regard to himself,
occasionally degenerated into a sort of disease or, in popular
language, _morbidness_ (a word, by the way, constantly abused by the
many who seem to excuse their own insensibility to surrounding evils
by stigmatising with that vague expression the acuter feeling of the
few), which sometimes assumed the appearance of partial unsoundness of
mind. This it was that caused him to suspect and quarrel with his best
friends, and which, we may suppose, led him, in his minute dissection
of himself, to exaggerate his real moral infirmities.
In summing up his personal character we shall perhaps impartially judge
him to have been, on the whole, amiable rather than admirable, of good
impulses, and of a naturally humane disposition, cultivated by reading
and reflection, but to have been wanting in firmness of mind and in
that virtue so much esteemed in the school of Pythagoras--self control.
His philosophy is distinguished rather by refinement than by vigour or
depth of thought.
It is in the education of the young that Rousseau exerts his eloquence
to enforce the importance of a non-flesh diet:--
“One of the proofs that the taste of flesh is not natural to man
is the indifference which children exhibit for that sort of meat,
and the preference they all give to vegetable foods, such as
milk-porridge, pastry, fruits, &c. It is of the last importance
not to _denaturalise_ them of this primitive taste (_de ne pas
dénaturer ce goût primitif_), and not to render them carnivorous,
if not for health reasons, at least _for the sake of their
character_. For, however the experience may be explained, it is
certain that great eaters of flesh are, in general, more cruel and
ferocious than other men. This observation is true of all places
and of all times. English coarseness is well known.[175] The
Gaures, on the contrary, are the gentlest of men. All savages are
cruel, and it is not their morals that urge them to be so; this
cruelty proceeds _from their food_. They go to war as to the chase,
and treat men as they do bears. Even in England the butchers are
not received as legal witnesses any more than surgeons.[176] Great
criminals harden themselves to murder by drinking blood.[177] Homer
represents the _Cyclopes_, who were flesh-eaters, as frightful
men, and the Lotophagi [Lotus-eaters] as a people so amiable that
as soon as one had any dealing with them one straightway forgot
everything, even one’s country, to live with them.”
Rousseau, in a free translation, here quotes a considerable part of
Plutarch’s _Essay_. He insists, especially, that children should be
early accustomed to the pure diet:--
“The further we remove from a natural mode of living the more
do we lose our natural tastes; or rather habit makes a _second_
nature, which we substitute to such a degree for the first that
none among us any longer knows what the latter is. It follows from
this that the most simple tastes must also be the most natural,
for they are those which are most easily changed, while by being
sharpened and by being irritated by our whims they assume a form
which never changes. The man who is yet of no country will conform
himself without trouble to the customs of any country whatever,
but the man of one country never becomes that of another. This
appears to me true in every sense, and still more so applied to
taste properly so-called. Our first food was milk. We accustom
ourselves only by degrees to strong flavours. At first they are
repugnant to us. Fruits, vegetables, kitchen herbs, and, in fine,
often broiled dishes, without seasoning and without salt, composed
the feasts of the first men. The first time a savage drinks wine
he makes a grimace and rejects it; and even amongst ourselves,
whoever has lived to his twentieth year without tasting fermented
drinks, cannot afterwards accustom himself to them. We should all
be abstinents from alcohol if we had not been given wines in our
early years. In fine, the more simple our tastes are the more
universal are they, and the most common repugnance is for made-up
dishes. Does one ever see a person have a disgust for water or
bread? Behold here the impress of nature! Behold here, then, our
rule of life. Let us preserve to the child as long as possible his
primitive taste; let its nourishment be common and simple; let not
its palate be familiarised to any but natural flavours, and let
no exclusive taste be formed.... I have sometimes examined those
people who attached importance to _good living_, who thought, upon
their first awaking, of what they should eat during the day, and
described a dinner with more exactitude than Polybius would use
in describing a battle. I have thought that all these so-called
men were but children of forty years without vigour and without
consistence--_fruges consumere nati_.[178] Gluttony is the vice of
souls that have no solidity (_qui n’ont point d’étoffe_). The soul
of a gourmand is in his palate. He is brought into the world but to
devour. In his stupid incapacity he is at home only at his table.
His powers of judgment are limited to his dishes. Let us leave him
in his employment without regret. Better that for him than any
other, as much for our own sakes as for his.”[179]
In the _Julie: ou la Nouvelle Heloise_ he describes his heroine as
preferring the innocent feast:--
“Although luxurious in her repasts she likes neither flesh-meat nor
ragoûts. Excellent vegetable dishes, eggs, cream, fruits--these
constitute her ordinary food; and, excepting fish, which she likes
as much, she would be a true Pythagorean.”[180]
Although he was not a thorough or consistent abstainer, Rousseau speaks
with enthusiasm of the pleasures of his frugal repasts, in which,
it seems, when he was not seduced by the sumptuous dinners of his
fashionable admirers, flesh, as a rule, had no part:--
“Who shall describe, who shall understand, the charm of these
repasts, composed of a quartern loaf, of cherries, of a little
cheese, and of a half-pint of wine, which we drank together.
Friendship, confidence, intimacy, sweetness of soul, how delicious
are your seasonings!”[181]
XXVIII.
LINNÉ. 1707-1778.
Karl von Linné, or (according to the antiquated fashion of _Latinising_
eminent names still retained) Linnæus, the distinguished Swedish
naturalist, and the most eminent name in botanical literature, in a
notable manner arrived at his destined immortality in spite of friends
and fortune. Prophecies do not always fulfil themselves, and the
estimate of his teachers that he was a hopeless “blockhead,” and the
prediction that he would be of no intellectual worth in the world (they
had advised his parents to apprentice him to a handicraft trade), are
a conspicuous instance of the falsification of prophecy. After one
year’s course of study at the University of Lund--where he had access
to a good library and collections of natural history--he proceeded to
the University of Upsala. There, upon an allowance by his father of £8
a year to meet all his expenses of living, he struggled desperately
against the almost insuperable obstacles of extreme poverty, which
forced him often to reduce his diet to one meal during the day. He was
then at the age of 20. At length, by the hospitable friendship of the
professor of botany, and a small income derived from a few pupils,
Linné found himself free to devote himself to the great labour of his
life. It was in the house of his host (Rudbeck) that he sketched the
subject-matter of the important works he afterwards published. In 1731
he was commissioned by his university to explore the vegetable life
of Lapland. Within the space of five months he traversed alone, and
with slender provision, some 4,000 miles. The result of this laborious
expedition was his _Flora Laponica_.
Three years later, with the sum of fifteen pounds, which he had with
great difficulty gathered together, he set out in search of some
university where he might obtain the necessary degree of doctor in
medicine at the least outlay, in order to gain a living by the practice
of physic. He found the object of his search in Holland. In that
country he met with a hospitable reception. During his residence in
Holland he came over to England, and visited the botanical collections
at Oxford and Eltham, with which the Swedish _savant_, it seems, had
not much reason to be satisfied. Returning to Sweden, he began practice
as a physician at the age of 31, and he lectured, by Government
appointment, upon botany and mineralogy at Stockholm. His fame had now
become European. He was in correspondence with some of the most eminent
scientific men throughout the world. Books and collections were sent to
him from every quarter, and his pupils supplied him with the results
of their explorations in the three continents. He was elected to the
Professorship of Medicine at Upsala, and (a vain addition to his real
titles) he was soon afterwards “ennobled.”
The productions of his genius and industry during the twenty years
from 1740 were astonishingly numerous. Besides his _Systema Naturæ_
and _Species Plantarum_, his two most considerable works, he wrote a
large number of dissertations, afterwards collected under the title of
_Amœnitates Academicæ_--“Academic Delights.” Everything he wrote was
received with the greatest respect by the scientific world. Upon his
death the whole University of Upsala united in showing respect to his
memory; sixteen doctors of medicine, old pupils, bearing the “pall,”
and a general mourning was ordered throughout the land of his birth.
The scientific merits of Linné are his exactness and conciseness in
classification. He reduced to something like order the chaotic and
pedantic systems of his predecessors, which were prolix and overladen
with names and classes. If the science still labours under the stigma
of needless pedantry, the fault lies not with himself, but with his
successors. Linné’s evidence to the scientific truth of Vegetarianism
is brief but _pregnant_:--
“This species of food [fruits and farinacea] is that which _is most
suited_ to man, as is proved by the series of quadrupeds, analogy,
wild men, apes, the structure of the mouth, of the stomach, and of
the hands.”[182]
XXIX.
BUFFON. 1707-1788.
An eminent instance of perversity of logic--of which, by the way, the
history of human thought supplies too many examples--is that of the
well-known author of the _Histoire Naturelle_, a work which (highly
interesting as it is, and always will be, by reason of the detailed
and generally accurate delineation of the characters and habits of the
various forms of animated nature, and by reason of the graces of style
of that French classic) is, from a strictly scientific point of view,
of not always the most reliable authority. Although Buffon has depicted
as forcibly as well can be conceived the low position in Nature of
the carnivorous tribes, and not a few of the evils arising from human
addiction to carnivorousness, yet, by a strange perversion of the facts
of comparative physiology, he has chosen to enlist himself amongst the
apologists of that degenerate mode of living. But facts are stronger
than prejudices, and his very candid _admissions_, which we shall here
quote, speak sufficiently for themselves:--
“Man [says he] knows how to use, as a master, his power over
[other] animals. He has selected those whose flesh _flatters his
taste_. He has made domestic slaves of them. He has multiplied them
more than Nature could have done. He has formed innumerable flocks,
and by the cares which he takes in propagating them he _seems_[183]
to have acquired the right of sacrificing them for himself. But he
extends that right _much beyond_ his needs. For, independently of
those species which he has subjected, and of which he disposes at
his will, he makes war also upon wild animals, upon birds, upon
fishes. He does not even limit himself to those of the climate
he inhabits. He seeks at a distance, even in the remotest seas,
new meats, and entire Nature seems scarcely to suffice for his
intemperance and the inconsistent variety of his appetites.
“_Man alone consumes and engulfs more flesh than all other animals
put together. He is, then, the greatest destroyer, and he is
so more by abuse than by necessity._ Instead of enjoying with
moderation the resources offered him, in place of dispensing them
with equity, in place of repairing in proportion as he destroys,
of renewing in proportion as he annihilates, the rich man makes
all his boast and glory in _consuming_, all his splendour in
destroying, in one day, at his table, more material (_plus de
biens_) than would be necessary for the support of several
families. He abuses equally other animals and his own species, the
rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only
to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable
vanity of this human being who, _destroying others by want,
destroys himself by excess_.
“And yet Man might, like other animals, live upon vegetables.
_Flesh is not a better nourishment than grains or bread._ What
constitutes true nourishment, what contributes to the nutrition,
to the development, to the growth, and to the support of the body,
is not that brute matter which, to our eyes, composes the texture
of flesh or of vegetables, but it is those organic molecules which
both contain; since the ox, in feeding on grass, acquires as much
flesh as man or as animals who live upon flesh and blood.... The
essential source is the same; it is the same matter, it is the same
organic molecules which nourish the Ox, Man, and all animals....
It results from what we have just said that Man, whose stomach
and intestines are not of a very great capacity relatively to the
volume of his body, could not live simply upon grass. Nevertheless
_it is proved by facts that he could well live upon bread,
vegetables, and the grains of plants_, since we know entire nations
and classes of men to whom religion forbids to feed upon anything
that has life.”
To the ordinary apprehension all this might seem _primâ facie_
conclusive evidence of the non-necessariness of the food of the
richer classes of the community. But, unhappily, Buffon seems to have
considered himself as holding a brief to defend his clients, the
flesh-eaters, in the last resort, and, accordingly, in spite of these
admissions, which to an unbiassed mind might appear conclusive argument
for the relinquishment of flesh as food, he proceeds to contradict
himself by adding:--
“But these examples, supported even by the authority of Pythagoras
[and he might have added many later names of equal authority], and
recommended by some physicians too friendly to a reformed diet
(_trop amis de diète!_), appear to me not sufficient to convince us
that it would be for the advantage of human health (_qu’il y eût à
gagner pour la santè des hommes_) and for the multiplication of the
human species to live upon vegetables and bread only, for so much
the stronger reason, that the poor country people, whom the luxury
of the cities and towns and the extravagant waste of tables reduce
to this mode of living, languish and die off sooner than persons
of the middle class, to whom inanition and excess are equally
unknown!”[184]
In stigmatising, in the following sentence, the cruel rapacity of the
lower carnivorous tribes, Buffon consciously or unconsciously stamps
the same stigma upon the carnivorous human animal:--
“_After Man_, the animals who live only upon flesh are the greatest
destroyers. They are at once the enemies of Nature and the rivals
of Man.”[185]
XXX.
HAWKESWORTH. 1715-1773.
Best known as the editor of _The Adventurer_--a periodical in imitation
of the _Spectator_, _Rambler_, &c.--which appeared twice a week during
the years 1752-54. Johnson, Warton, and others assisted him in this
undertaking, which has the honour of being one of the first periodicals
which have ventured to denounce the cruel barbarism of “Sport,” and the
papers by Hawkesworth upon that subject are in striking contrast with
the usual tone and practice of his contemporaries and, indeed, of our
own times.
In 1761 he published an edition of Swift’s writings, with a life which
received the praise of Samuel Johnson (in his _Lives of the Poets_),
and it is a passage in that book which entitles him to a place here.
In 1773 he was entrusted by the Government of the day with the task
of compiling a history of the recent voyages of Captain Cook. He also
translated the _Aventures de Télémaque_ of Fénélon. The coarseness
and repulsiveness of the dishes of the common diet seldom have been
stigmatised with greater force than by Dr. Hawkesworth. His expressions
of abhorrence are conceived quite in the spirit of Plutarch:--
“Among other dreadful and disgusting images which Custom has
rendered familiar, are those which arise from eating animal food.
He who has ever turned with abhorrence from the skeleton of a
beast which has been picked whole by birds or vermin, must confess
that _habit_ alone could have enabled him to endure the sight of
the mangled bones and flesh of a dead carcase which every day
cover his table. And he who reflects on the _number_ of lives that
have been sacrificed to sustain his own, should enquire by _what_
the account has been balanced, and whether his life is become
proportionately of more value by the exercise of virtue and by the
superior happiness which he has communicated to [more] reasonable
beings.”[186]
XXXI.
PALEY. 1743-1805.
With the exception of Joseph Butler, perhaps the ablest and most
interesting of English orthodox theologians. As one of the very few
of this numerous class of writers who seem seriously to be impressed
with the difficulty of reconciling orthodox _dietetics_ with the higher
moral and religious instincts, Paley has for social reformers a title
to remembrance, and it is as a moral philosopher that he has a claim
upon our attention.
The son of a country curate, Paley began his career as tutor in an
academy in Greenwich. He had entered Christ’s College, Cambridge,
as “sizar.” Being senior wrangler of his year, he was afterwards
elected a Fellow of his college. His lectures on moral philosophy at
the University contained the germs of his most useful writing. After
the usual previous stages, finally he received the preferment of the
Archdeaconry of Carlisle. The failure of the most eminent of the modern
apologists of dogmatic Christianity to attain the highest rewards of
ecclesiastical ambition, and the refusal of George III. to promote
“pigeon” Paley when it was proposed to that reactionary prince to make
so skilful a controversialist a bishop--a refusal founded on the famous
apology for monarchy in the _Moral and Political Philosophy_--is well
known.